During a performance in Philadelphia last week, stand up comedian Hannibal Buress said Bill Cosby was a hypocrite because he criticized the ethics of black people but allegedly raped 13 women.
In 2004, Cosby addressed the public in Washington D.C. at the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education supreme court decision in which he appeared deeply cynical about poor black American families.
The actor-comedian couldn’t fathom why parents would spend $500 on a pair of sneakers, but refused to invest $250 in their child’s education. He mocked the black community for their language etiquette, too.
I can’t even talk the way these people talk. ‘Why you ain’t where you is go, ra,’ I don’t know who these people are. And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. Then I heard the father talk. This is all in the house. You used to talk a certain way on the corner and you got into the house and switched to English. Everybody knows it’s important to speak English except these knuckleheads.
After the remarks, he was accused of being an elitist, embarrassed by his own culture, and for “blaming the victim.” The speech is often referred to as the “Pound Cake Speech” because Cosby made a reference to the dessert while making a political statement.
But these people, the ones up here in the balcony fought so hard. Looking at the incarcerated, these are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake! And then we all run out and are outraged, ‘The cops shouldn’t have shot him.
What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand? I wanted a piece of pound cake just as bad as anybody else, and I looked at it and I had no money. And something called parenting said, ‘If you get caught with it you’re going to embarrass your mother.’ Not ‘You’re going to get your butt kicked.’ No. ‘You’re going to embarrass your family.’
Cosby said he felt compelled to speak out because he feared conservative media was damaging the reputation of black Americans. A couple of years later, Cosby was accused of sexually abusing more than a dozen women.
Similar to how 7th Heaven star Stephen Collins will likely be protected by the statute of limitations from his confessed pedophilia, Cosby’s charges were reportedly dropped because his alleged victims didn’t inform law enforcement about the assaults until decades later.
“Bill Cosby has the f–ing smuggest old black man public persona that I hate,” Buress told the audience last week. “‘Pull your pants up, black people. I was on TV in the ’80s. I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom.’ Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. So, brings you down a couple notches… I don’t curse on stage. But yeah, you’re a rapist.”
Watch the video to hear Hannibal Buress weigh in on Bill Cosby:
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